This comic is super indulgent for me, so every scene with parents is going to be cute as hell. And look at all those backgrounds. I'm kind of enjoying drawing backgrounds a lot lately.
Malaya's mother is of Filipino-Chinese descent, and is a professor at the local university. (Wherever local is...this story takes places somewhere in Michigan, don't worry about it.) Her dad is white and owns the local coffee shop where her parents met :). (Which I will cover at some point in the future, they're super cute.)